Kirby Panel plugin for field and blocks translation with DeepL or other services

Kirby Content Translator

Sometimes you may find yourself copying content from Kirby fields to your clipboard, only to paste it into a translation service of your choice. This plugin aims to simplify the translation process by providing a simple interface for translating a model’s content (page, file, etc.), while allowing full flexibility in choosing which fields to translate.

With a single click, an editor can:

  1. Synchronise content from the default language to the secondary language.
  2. Translate content using the DeepL API or a custom translation service.

Key Features

  • ? Translate writer, blocks and other fields with one click!
  • ? Configure which fields should be translated
  • ? Panel buttons
  • ? Use DeepL API or custom translation service

Preview

For the following preview, I used the example section blueprint to synchronise the description and text fields, which are of type writer and blocks, respectively.

The default language in the example is English. The secondary language is German, to which the content is first synchronised (copied) and then translated.

Requirements

  • Kirby 4+

Kirby is not a free software. You can try it for free on your local machine but in order to run Kirby on a public server you must purchase a valid license.

Installation

Composer

composer require johannschopplich/kirby-content-translator

Download

Download and copy this repository to /site/plugins/kirby-content-translator.

Getting Started

DeepL Account

By default, this plugin uses the DeepL API to translate your content. You can use any other translation service by defining a custom translator function (see below).

In order to use the DeepL API, you have to create an account and generate an API key.

Panel Section

First, set up the Panel section in one of your blueprints, e.g. a page blueprint and configure the fields that should be synchronised and translated:

  • The syncableFields key defines the fields that should be copied from the default language to the secondary language when the user is editing content in any language but the default language and clicks the synchronise button.
  • The translatableFields key defines the fields that should be translated when the user clicks the translate button.

Below is an example configuration with common configuration options:

sections:
  contentTranslator:
    type: content-translator
    # Define field names which should be synced from the default language to other languages
    syncableFields:
      - text
      - description
      - tags
    # Define field names that should be translated
    translatableFields:
      - text
      - description
    # Define the field names inside blocks which should be translated
    translatableBlocks:
      # Example: translate the `text` field of the `heading` block
      heading:
        - text
      text:
        - text
      image:
        - alt
        - caption

Finally, store the DeepL API key in your config file:

# /site/config/config.php
return [
    'johannschopplich.content-translator' => [
        // API key for the DeepL API
        'DeepL' => [
            'apiKey' => 'abc123…'
        ]
    ]
];

Configuration

The following blueprint configuration options are available for the content-translator Panel section:

Key Type Default Description
syncableFields array [] The fields that should be copied from the default language to the secondary language when the user is editing content in any language but the default language.
translatableFields array [] The fields that should be translated when the user clicks the translate button.
translatableBlocks array [] The block names and their corresponding fields that should be translated when the user clicks the translate button.
label string or array See translations.php Optionally, you can translate the section label.
confirm boolean true Disable the confirmation dialog before either the synchronisation or translation process is started.

Tip

If no syncableFields are defined, the button to synchronise content will not be displayed.

Section Label

Optionally, you can translate the section label by adding a label key:

sections:
  contentTranslator:
    type: content-translator
    # Either use a single label for all languages
    label: Translator
    # Or use language codes for multilingual labels
    # label:
    #   en: Translator
    #   de: Übersetzer

Skip Dialogs Before Synchronising/Translating

To make sure an editor doesn’t accidentally synchronise or translate content and thus overwrite existing translations, a confirmation dialog is displayed before the process is started. If you want to skip this dialog, you can set the confirm key to false:

sections:
  contentTranslator:
    type: content-translator
    confirm: false

Global Configuration Defaults

Instead of defining the configuration in every blueprint, you can also define global defaults in your config file. This is especially useful if, for example, every page’s blocks should be translated the same way.

Note

Local blueprint configurations will always override global defaults.

return [
    'johannschopplich.content-translator' => [
        'syncableFields' => ['text', 'description'],
        'translatableFields' => ['text', 'description'],
        'translatableBlocks' => [
            'heading' => ['text'],
            'text' => ['text'],
            'image' => ['alt', 'caption']
        ],
        'confirm' => false,
        'DeepL' => [
            'apiKey' => env('DEEPL_API_KEY')
        ]
    ]
]

Custom Translator Function

Instead of using the DeepL API, you can define a custom translator callback that accepts the text to be translated, the source language code and the target language code.

# /site/config/config.php
return [
    'johannschopplich.algolia-docsearch' => [
        'translateFn' => function (string $text, string|null $sourceLanguageCode, string $targetLanguageCode) {
          return myCustomTranslateFunction($text, $sourceLanguageCode, $targetLanguageCode);
        }
    ]
];

License

MIT License © 2023-PRESENT Johann Schopplich

MIT License © 2023-PRESENT Dennis Baum

GitHub

View Github